Spinning (13 page)

Next to me, my friends were talking to each other, but I wasn’t paying attention to anything they said. All I heard was Spring’s voice and the simple, single-note tune.

“… down came the rain and washed the spider out…”

With a flash of yellow, I felt Spring squeeze my leg. A taxi pulled close and someone came around and opened my door. Billie helped me into the cab, while Jim tried to pry Spring from my leg again at least long enough for all of us to fit.

I absently wondered,
How do you fit a whole person into a box this size?
It seemed like there should have been more ash. I held Spring’s hand.

“… the itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout…”

Things started to look familiar again when we stepped off the elevator; familiar colors, the friendly citrus smell of polished wood. I was home. Jim reached into my jacket pocket, removed a robin’s-egg-blue box and then my keys to the door. He and Billie escorted us inside.

“Hey, somebody Picassoed all over your walls,” Jim said. He smiled at Spring. “Was that you?”

She didn’t say anything.

“This looks like your signature,” Jim said, pointing to the sun with its trademark wavy orange rays and happy face.

“Spring drew that, too.”

“You don’t say?” He checked with Billie. “Why don’t we all sit down?”

My apartment felt empty.

In the center of the room, there was a set of Legos that Spring and I had been playing with last Tuesday. It resembled a building of some sort. I remember suggesting to her that the building needed a door and Spring telling me that she wanted the building to open with magic instead.

“Cool building,” Jim said, sitting on the floor. He held it up and turned it around. “How do you get in?”

Billie sat on the couch and Spring inched toward her. “Spring, wouldn’t you like to play for a while?” she said, nodding toward Jim.

Spring shook her head. “The itsy bitsy spider…”

“Dylan, we have the itsy bitsy again. Any suggestions?”

“Get her some juice out of the fridge.”

“… went up the waterspout.”

“Let me get you some juice, Spring,” Billie said. She moved to the kitchen, grabbed a cup and went to the fridge. On the door, pictures of Diane and Spring and me lined the outside: Spring at the zoo, me and Spring at the park, Diane and Spring at Bethesda Fountain, and another picture of Spring with Mr. Jimmy. She poured some grape juice and returned to the family room.

“Here you are, Spring.”

“Hey,” Jim said, grabbing my arm, “what happened to the Mickey Mantle?”

“Spring wanted to play with it, so it’s in my closet.”

“Say it ain’t so, Joe. You’ve got a signed Mickey Mantle bat and ball in your closet?”

‘Fraid so, kid. Sits right next to the Eli Manning signed football.”

“Oh, D-Man. I’m not feeling so well. How about a beer?”

“In the fridge.”

Jim disappeared and then I had a beer in my hand. Since Friday, time had fallen in patches. I observed no taste to the beer, but it was cold to the touch. We all held bottles except Spring, who sipped the grape juice. Her slurping made the only noise in the apartment until she bumped into Billie, spilling grape juice onto her white blouse.

“Shit!” Billie exclaimed, marching into the kitchen. The grape juice began to soak into her shirt, while some had run down her body leaving a purple trail across the tile to the kitchen.

Before I noticed Jim’s warning, I started to laugh. He was trying to wave me off, but he looked like Jimbo the Monkeyman again. With one arm waving his beer and the other trying to shut me up making rapid swooping motions across his chest and spilling beer he only made me laugh harder.

“You think this is funny?” Billie said, blotting at her blouse with a towel. Spring stood behind her, arms extended for anyone’s help, with grape juice trickling down her pink dress.

“No,” I laughed. “I’m sorry. I really don’t think it’s funny.”

Seeing how everything in my life had just changed and how the woman I planned to propose to had just died, I couldn’t imagine laughing in this situation. Yet, I was guffawing like I’d never seen anything so funny. The line between my laughter and tears appeared as fine as a sharpened pencil, or the thin stripe of grape juice leading into the kitchen. And as I laughed, I felt a few tears slip
out. I understood why it was okay to cry and why people who laughed were sometimes carted away.

“I’m sorry, Billie,” I said again. I walked to the kitchen and picked up Spring. She eyed me strangely, sensing that the laughter was out of place.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Billie said. “Look at this blouse. It’s a Dana Buchman!”

As quickly as it had begun, my laughter ended. The child in my arms felt heavy and started to slide down my side, lifting her pink dress up around her stomach. Jim removed Spring who surprisingly allowed him to and carried her into the living room, consoling her with the experience of a dad three times over. He pulled the skirt of her dress down to where it should be and rocked her.

“Billie, I’m sorry. It was an accident,” I said.

“Why are you sorry? I know she didn’t mean it.” She continued to blot, adding some more water to the towel.

“I don’t know. I just am.”

“Dylan, I’m sorry about Diane. And for you.” She looked to Spring rocking in Jim’s arms. “And for her.”

I guess the situation was too much for Billie. When she finished the triage on her blouse, she left.

“D-Man, you know how Billie is,” Jim said after she was gone. “Kids might as well be gerbils. She doesn’t know how to handle them. I didn’t think you did, either.”

Jim put Spring gently on the couch and she sat there while he followed me around the kitchen.

“I don’t,” I said.

“I see how you are with Spring. You’re good with her. She likes you.”

“She does?” I looked toward the living room to see her little gray eyes, still red from crying.

“It’s gonna take a little time,” Jim said, “for Billie to take all this in. You know Billie.”

“Billie? I’m not worried about Billie. I’m worried about Spring. What is she supposed to do?” I looked at the urn on the shelf. Would Diane prefer to be flush with the edge or angled to see the living room?

“Yeah, sure you are, D-Man. So, why don’t you go out for a while? You like to walk. Go for a walk. Get a beer. Get out of here. I can watch Spring…”

“Spring should be with me, thanks.”

“So what can you do? You gotta do something?”

“I’m going to go over to Diane’s apartment and get her stuff.”

“Now?”

“Why not now? I might as well get it out of the way. Besides, Spring needs her things. We have to get her room ready here.”

“Aren’t there relatives or somebody she should be going to?”

I looked at Spring. Diane had said nothing about anyone in her family. Maybe there was someone an aunt, a godparent someone. “I don’t have a clue. I guess I’ll find out. But she’s gotta feel okay here in the meantime.”

Jim offered to help me get things from Diane’s apartment, but I politely declined. Diane and Spring had spent most of their time over at my place, and even I wasn’t familiar with her apartment. It was my responsibility to go through her things. I asked Jim to give me a few days to get over this, and he reminded me that he had some cold beers in the fridge when I was ready.

On the way to Diane’s apartment, I went by the accident scene because I needed to see it. Obviously, Spring had no idea what I was doing. Except for a few pieces of colored plastic near the crosswalk, I couldn’t tell anything had happened.

Diane’s place looked the same. It felt like I was simply coming over after work and had just beaten her home. In a few minutes, she would come strolling through the door, kiss Spring, kiss me, and say that since I didn’t appreciate her tofu, my pizza with extra pepperoni should be here in 20 minutes. She’d walk over to the stove and start some water for Spring’s gourmet macaroni and then to the bedroom to change clothes. I’d pour a couple of glasses of wine, sit on the couch and we’d tell each other about our days.

I wanted something that normal, that uneventful. Instead, it was Spring and me and three partially molding pumpkins.

“Spring, go to your room and get your things together to pack, okay?”

She said nothing, but retreated to her bedroom. Diane hadn’t purchased much since arriving in New York. She’d rented a furnished apartment from Mr. Barnes and there wasn’t any need to buy much other than food. There were no new dishes, chairs, or wall hangings. Because of this, the apartment never looked like Diane. You know how after a while, your place seems to take on your characteristics or you begin to take on its? Messy or clean, cluttered or organized. After only five weeks of living here, very little of this metamorphosis had occurred. There were two pictures sitting on the shelf, one of Diane and Spring by the penguins, and the other of me holding Spring upside down when we were goofing around one night.

On the refrigerator, Diane had hung some of Spring’s artwork from the daycare. There was a picture of two happy stick people standing under a happy orange sun. I knew the people were happy as they were smiling, though I guess the smiles could have been ironic. In another picture, three people stood over some and I’m not sure about this, but I think so orange ducks that resembled the creatures on my wall at home.

Entering Diane’s bedroom made me smile. I could smell her perfume, Boucheron, floating in dainty parcels around the room. On the bed stand, a photograph of Diane and me leaned against the lamp. Spring had taken the picture, the only one of a series of six that didn’t cut off one of our heads. Diane and I giggled though I can hardly believe I giggled as Spring snapped away.

On the night stand under the generic beige phone, I spotted the pink sliver of a binding. It was Diane’s address book. Inside might be the answers to anything I’d forgotten to ask. While I would have memorized sensitive numbers and carried them to my death, Diane would have written them in here. I opened the book to the A-B’s. Nothing. C-D’s. Nothing. E-F-G’s. Nothing.
Surely under the H’s
…I turned the page. There it was: my name and birthday. No phone and no address. Flipping through the pages, I didn’t see anything, but I double-checked the S’s. Sommers.
Perhaps there will be a cousin or aunt?

I had missed one. On the
S
page, where my address book had used up at least three full pages with new names or old names with new information, was a single listing. It didn’t say Sommers, like I had hoped. It said
E
and listed a phone number, with no area code and no address.

I looked aimlessly around the room for another clue. E could be for Everyman, but then it should have listed a 555 prefix like they do in the movies. E could stand for Eddie as easily as E could stand for Elizabeth. I, too, had forgotten to list some of the area codes for numbers I remembered.

The drawer in her bed stand was empty, and a pair of fuzzy slippers was partially hidden beneath the bed. Nothing else. In her bathroom, I only found the usual deodorant, and toothpaste not a prescription in the cabinet.

Opening the door to her closet, a billow of Boucheron caressed my face. I closed my eyes to inhale and relive the tingling sensation Diane sent up my spine. I could hear her voice and almost see her smile, while I dozed off after sex. She’d tickle my back and head because, as I’d told her, it would help her sleep better. I planted my face in her clothing and inhaled again, half expecting her to walk in and ask me what the hell I was doing.

On the floor of the closet, next to the few pairs of shoes, was the Aspen Rolling Duffle Tote I had purchased as a housewarming present. It was empty and still bearing its original tags. She’d never had the chance to use it. Behind the tote, the old relic of a suitcase Diane had arrived with hid behind the cellophane of her dry-cleaning. As I slid the suitcase closer, I noticed it weighed more than I had expected and that I couldn’t grab it with one hand. When I tried the latch, I discovered that it was locked. For a woman with nothing to hide, in my hands was the only piece of privacy I could find in her apartment. Not like a missing key was a big deal. A screwdriver and 15 seconds would do just as well. But for a woman with nothing to hide, why was the suitcase locked? I set the suitcase on the bed, running my fingers along its edges. Old stickers
listed names of foreign countries. Several had worn off over the years, leaving only fragments behind, some of which were covered by additional stickers. While the tan leather suitcase probably dripped with clues, it told me very little. Even the heavy brass hinges had rusted with age.

I lifted the case and shook it not a big bear shake, but a slight
what-if-there’s-glass-in-it
shake. I didn’t hear anything break, which is always a good sign, but I didn’t hear anything that told me what might be inside. I shook it a little harder. Various items slid around, and still, nothing appeared to break. I tested the latches again. This time, I pushed and pulled them in all directions with the same result.
Still locked.